19871776 Club
Twenty-four nations sign a treaty to phase out the chemicals eating the ozone layer
The Montreal agreement turns two years of scientific alarm into binding limits on CFCs.
By the fall of 1987, the hole over Antarctica was no longer a theory. In Montreal, on September 16, representatives of 24 countries and the European Community signed a protocol setting binding controls on the production and use of chlorofluorocarbons, the refrigerants and propellants blamed for stripping away stratospheric ozone. The agreement followed the 1985 Vienna Convention, which had asked nations only to study the problem. Montreal replaced that study mandate with binding controls…
